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4.4 DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUES AND INSTRUMENTS
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(structured or unstructured) consists of numerous questions in hard or soft copy in a specific order, on a set of forms. It is the most widely used method of data collection in various social and economic surveys, mainly in the case of extensive enquiries (Kothari, 2004). Their use of open-ended vs closed-ended questioning and their level of predetermined character is helpful in a given study (Creswell, 2003; Creswell &
Plano Clark, 2018).
An open-ended question (requiring an unstructured, free response) asks a question which respondents can answer in their own words. It allows participants to give their views freely (Creswell, 2014). A closed-ended question (asking for a structured, fixed response) asks a question and offers a fixed set of answers from which a respondent can choose (Krosnick & Presser, 2010; Neuman, 2014; Cohen et al., 2018). Surveys typically provide numeric or quantitative descriptions of a population's trends. Opinions mainly follow some standard format with some distinctive components (Creswell, 2003; Cohen et al., 2018).
The quantitative data of the study were generated through self‐administered structured survey questionnaires. The structured survey questionnaire was employed to collect the quantitative data, as mention by Babbie (2010), Neuman (2014) and Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007), due to the following reasons:
It is a widely used descriptive data-collection tool and measures variables in a quantitative empirical study;
It allows to collect information on a variety of variables;
It has a broad reach and provide respondents with more flexibility;
Allows to ask the same questions to various respondents and examining the range of their answers;
Provides rapid turnaround in data collection, particularly where the samples are large;
Gives and develops a multifaceted instrument to gather diverse sets of information;
Allows to collect a substantial amount of information from a larger group of respondents with low cost; and gives sufficient time to respondents.
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Despite their advantages, surveys may have drawbacks such as poor knowledge among respondents, inability to provide appropriate responses or low response rates.
It is best used when respondents are educated and cooperative. It is also difficult to amend once it has been dispatched (Neuman, 2014). It also takes time to develop, pilot and refine the questionnaire (Cohen et al., 2018). The questionnaire is, however, a valuable instrument widely used for collecting survey information and can be administered without the researcher's presence.
The structured questionnaire was employed to collect data on the respondents' perceptions of feelings, attitudes, and level of satisfaction regarding the effectiveness of HLIs’ leadership in assuring the quality of education. Accordingly, two types of self- administered questionnaires, having both open-ended and closed-ended questions (a large portion of the questions were closed-ended), were developed based on the conceptual framework and information obtained by reviewing relevant literature. The first type of self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from teaching staff, and the second was from students graduating from the sampled HLIs. The questionnaires contained items on the status of quality education, leadership characteristics, and their role in establishing and implementing robust quality assurance systems and procedures to assure educational quality in their institution.
After conducting a pilot survey to test the reaction of respondents and make any essential improvements to the final questionnaires, the questionnaires were disseminated in hard copy over the statistically driven sample of respondents. The distribution of the questionnaires to the respondents and collection of the completed questionnaires was conducted by the researcher in collaboration with the recruited data collectors. The researcher undertook a continuous follow-up to request returns of the completed questionnaires. The response rate for students and instructors was 93.7% and the response rates are shown in Table 4.3.
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Table 4.3: Questionnaire response rates from instructors and students
HLI
Instructors Students Data
collection date Distributed Returned Distributed Returned
M F T M F T M F T M F T
ADU 25 5 30 25 5 30 18 12 30 18 12 30 10–20 Oct
2021
AMU 35 15 50 33 12 45 32 18 50 27 16 43 12–22 Feb
2022
HRU 24 6 30 21 4 25 18 12 30 16 12 28 02–12 Nov
2021
WKU 41 9 50 41 9 50 28 22 50 28 21 49 01–10 Feb
2022 Total 125 35 160 120 30 150 96 64 160 89 61 150
Note: F = female; M = male and T = total 4.4.2.2 Interviews
Interviews are used prominently in qualitative research because they offer chances to gather individualised and contextualised data through different types of interviews such as unstructured, structured, semi-structured, informal, and focus groups, depending on the methodological approach (Carl & Ravitch, 2018). In this study, semi- structured and unstructured interviews were used for the respondents listed in Table 4.2 above. Accordingly, different versions of semi-structured interview questions were developed and administered to the respective sampled representatives to solicit an in- depth understanding of the HLI’s leadership effectiveness in assuring the quality of higher education. In semi-structured interviews, similar questions are asked across research participants but were not always asked in the same order. During the interview, the researcher tends to ask follow-up questions (Carl & Ravitch, 2018).
Accordingly, the data for the qualitative part of the study was collected based on unstructured and semi-structured open-ended face-to-face interview protocol with the 22 sampled participants (see Table 4.2) to explore the interviewees' attitudes, opinions, and perspectives regarding the identified research questions. The researcher collected the interview data since the researcher is the main instrument in qualitative research (Carl & Ravitch, 2018).
Some interviewees' views were tape-recorded with their consent to capture the whole ideas of the interviews and to give the opportunity to transcribe the recorded data into textual form. The interview was scheduled at a convenient time for the interviewee and the researcher, lasting 30 minutes. According to Neuman (2014) and Yin (2011), to be
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successful in conducting interviews, specific personal abilities such as skill in managing field-based research, managing time, “listening”, doing parallel tasks, having sufficient knowledge about the topic of study, asking good questions, caring about the data to be collected, noticing interviewees’ body language and intonation, and upholding a stated code of ethics are all needed by the researcher. The advantage of conducting qualitative data collection such as interviews, is reinforcing conclusions to support or dispute inferences by triangulation (Yin, 2011). In some cases, a telephone interview was also conducted by the interviewees' choice and consent by arranging a suitable time.
4.4.2.3 Focus group discussions
Focus groups are made up of “focused” individuals who most likely share some common views or have had some common practice (Yin, 2011). A focus group is a helpful and flexible type of qualitative data collection instrument, allowing group members to respond to each other with open-ended questions (Stewart, 2018) that tend to follow a semi-structured interviewing process (Carl & Ravitch, 2018). A focus group discussion was conducted with the student union of the three sampled HLIs of Arba Minch University (AMU), Harambee University (HRU) and Wolkite University (WKU). The discussion was led by the researcher, who gathered data from the participants. The number of focus group participants was five in the case of the two public HLIs (AMU and WKU) and three in the private HLI (HRU). During the discussion, all participants actively engaged and had adequate time to share their opinions on the topic of the discussion.
4.4.2.4 Observation
According to Yin (2011:143), observation is an essential data collection instrument;
what is perceived with one’s senses and seen with one’s own eyes is not filtered by what others might have reported. Therefore, observation is a type of primary data- gathering strategy that provides a researcher with visual insight into the subject studied. In this study, the researcher made observations during the data collection schedule at the research sites. The researcher observed the adequacy and effectiveness of randomly selected teaching and learning facilities of the sampled HLIs (see Annexure P), followed by an informal conversation with experts operating in those facilities to triangulate any claims (positive or negative) that arose during interviews.
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The observation took place during other data collection schedules (interview and questionnaire distribution).
4.4.2.5 Document analysis
Even though it is time-consuming, it is necessary to compile or accumulate items such as documents, archival records, and others linked to the researcher’s study topics while in the field, or from other sources such as libraries and electronically based sources (Yin 2011). Documents contain images, text, or words that have been documented without a researcher's intervention (Bowen, 2009; Morgan, 2022). They may be private or public documents (Creswell, 2014). Documents provide background and context, confirmation of findings from other data sources, supplementary data, further enquiries to be raised, follow-up development, and change when informants have forgotten the details of events (Bowen, 2009; Morgan, 2022). The document analysis was employed in this study to contextualise the guidelines, policies and regulations, and the actual practice of the leadership activities in assuring the quality of education.
This research studied the latest printed or electronic forms of secondary data such as annual reports, legislation, quality assurance policies, strategic plans, annual plans, students and staff statistics. Moreover, the web page of the four sampled HLIs and other documents and guidelines, which are assumed to be relevant sources of information for the study, were used and analysed to obtain detailed information that enhanced the data quality. Additionally, the Ethiopian Proclamations on Higher Education (351/2003, 650/2009, and 1152/2019) and the Ethiopian education development roadmap (2018–30) were analysed. The document analysis enriches results obtained through other data collection instruments and triangulates results with survey findings. Hard or soft copies of some documents were collected for further scrutiny with the consent of the institutions.